The international Red Cross has asked the US-led coalition in Iraq for access to captured former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
Under the Geneva Conventions the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has the right to contact any prisoner of war or detained civilian.

Africa, Africa, Africa. So much is flying under U.S. media radar, it’s hard to know where to start -- from Mugabe’s terrorizing of Zimbabwe to AIDS to the renewed national and regional depredations of Nigeria, a country effectively run by the likes of Shell and Chevron, and whichever local generals have the franchise this week. But as always the place to start is Central Africa -- where a brutal, decade-long war has now killed a staggering four million or more people, replete with atrocities, civilian massacres, torture, sexual slavery, and lots and lots of U.S.-made weaponry. The war’s raison d’etre? The mineral wealth of the eastern Congo, which includes several rare minerals used in the production of computer screens, keyboards, and chips. Prominent among the numerous American companies getting rich by paying “rebel” armies to take over mining regions are -- surprise -- Halliburton and Bechtel. This should be a scandal rocking the globe -- but it’s sub-Saharan Africa, where they don’t value life the way we do [sic].

An exasperated Bush replied: "So, what's the difference?"

The silent epidemic of hepatitis C is officially estimated to have infected 200,000 people in the UK - four times as many as HIV - and more than 100 people are being infected each week. It is 10 times more infectious via blood-to-blood contact than HIV, but less infectious than HIV via sexual contact.

After the capture, Clingempeel told his parents how quickly it happened, how his unit drove through the night without lights on. Before they knew it, said Clingempeel, they had him.
"I asked him, 'Did you recognize him when he came out of the hole?' " said Clingempeel's mother, Ann. "He said, 'I had an image in my mind, all the pictures from TV, in uniform, shaking rifles and stuff, but the man they pulled out of the hole was a beaten-down homeless old man who was just glad it was over."
Clingempeel told his parents he tried to get down into the hole the next day, but couldn't fit.

And I'm sure most noticed, there is no Christ in the Cheney Christmas Card. Wouldn't want to offend his NeoCon pals...

A Brazilian judge furious at U.S. plans to fingerprint and photograph Brazilians entering the United States has ordered Brazil to do the same to U.S. citizens, police said on Tuesday. "I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis," said Federal Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva in the court order released on Tuesday.

Newsweek journalists Evan Thomas and Mark Hosenball reported on September 24, 2001 that a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for September 11, 2001, apparently because of security concerns. Newsweek removed the story from the internet but you can read the transcript here

Under a new state law that takes effect Jan. 1, men between 18 and 25 will be automatically registered for selective service whenever they apply for driver's licenses or state identification cards.
Still, he said, the government maintains the selective service system as a potential "third tier" of national protection - behind the regular military and reserve troops - just in case America ever faced a situation so dire that the draft had to be reintroduced to deal with it.

(I found out later that out of a thousand movies made in Nazi Germany, three were anti-Semitic.)

Alan Turing, a scientist of the same stature as Gödel, died (committed suicide) in a British prison.

"We lost a lot of good men, son. Fine young men. A lot of them, farm kids," he replies in a soft trembling voice. "I remember every one of them. Every-one. "

The U.S. dollar's steady decline in value against the euro and other key currencies may cause agony in European capitals but there is little sign it is rising to the level of a major policy concern in Washington.
"I think on balance there are far more positives for the United States in what is going on in currencies than there are negatives," said economist Greg Valliere of Schwab Washington Research Group.
Economist Allen Sinai of Decision Economics Inc. in Boston wrote this week that the Bush administration had an evident policy of "benign neglect, if not outright approval" of a cheaper dollar.

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the rotation "a logistics feat that will rival any in history." "So there's going to be a lot of turbulence in the system, as you would expect," Myers told reporters recently.
"Turbulence is always undesirable," added Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States wants the world to start buying its beef again
Still pending is a U.S. decision whether to allow import of cattle from Canada, which used to ship 1 million head a year for slaughter at U.S. plants. The United States is Canada's largest beef export market.

British Airways canceled one of its three daily flights from London to Washington on Thursday following security advice from the government, a spokesman for the airline said.
The same flight, BA 223, on Wednesday was kept on the tarmac at Washington Dulles International Airport for several hours shortly after landing. U.S. authorities questioned all passengers and crew on board, the spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The American authorities in the last week directed a United States-bound flight from Mexico to turn around in midair and imposed extraordinary security measures on at least six other incoming flights because of terrorist concerns, federal officials said Wednesday.